Out of the Wreck of You and Me
by The Reigning LauraLi
Summary: Another fix of The Real Paul Anka, because every Lit has an obligation to rewrite that episode. Enjoy! T for language and non-explicit allusions to sex.


**Author's Note-** Never fear, I'm still working on the first chapter (well, second, but the first post was a prologue so whatever) of TDIAZ, but V forced me to sit through (yet another) screening of The Real Paul Anka and after winding up in tears **again**, I realized that I *had* to correct it! I don't care that it's been done a million times, I just need to fix it, desperately. Besides, I think that's one episode that every single Lit out there has the right to correct. That and Nag Hammadi. Maybe, just maybe Say Goodnight, Gracie.

Point is, this is a oneshot. At least until I finish TDIAZ. After that's all done, I may decide to expand this or write a sequel or something, but we'll see.

* * *

Out of the Wreck of You and Me

The minute the door is closed behind her, Rory breaks down. Those words are playing on a loop in her head:

_If it makes you feel any better, you can tell him we did something..._

_I thought everything was fixed!_

_It is what it is._

She's choking, choking on his words, choking on her tears, choking on her own breath in her lungs. She sinks down on the bottom step in front of Truncheon Books, shaking from the effort of internalizing her sobs. This is what she does- when things get rough, too painful to handle, she stuffs them way down deep and locks them somewhere she won't have to look at them. Tonight, she will do the same with her crying. Except the tears won't stop coming and she feels physically sick.

What has she done?

It's fine, she told herself. It didn't mean anything to him. It was nostalgia or something. She would have been stupid to think it was anything more than the boy she used to know returning to something familiar. She would have been an idiot to jump. He wouldn't have stuck around and then she wouldn't have just lost him, she'd have thrown away what she could salvage with Logan, as well.

Her crying redoubles, though, when she remembers the look on his face. It hadn't looked like nostalgia. But then, Jess has always been difficult to read.

Without warning, the door behind her bangs open and she whirls around, staring. There he is...

* * *

Jess taps his fingers against his thighs, trying to release the nervous tension pinging through his body as he paces back and forth in the space where she stood just ten minutes ago. He is seething with energy; he wants to go, run, do something, do _anything_ not to feel this. As cliché as it is, his heart feels like it's breaking. He can't take this. He learned to be strong, he learned to handle anything life threw his way, but this? This is going to destroy him, and he knows it, and there's nothing he can do to stop it.

She's gone. She came, she kissed him, and she's gone. She's in love with the blonde dick who doesn't know her, who snared her in with pretty gifts and smooth talking, and Jess is left out in the cold. Again.

His fist lashes out and slams into the wall. His knuckle splits open and he swears under his breath.

Violence isn't the answer, and he isn't pathetic enough to attempt self-harm. That leaves alcohol. Maybe he can drink this away.

If he was more rational, he would remember what a slippery slope this can be. God knows he's seen enough examples courtesy of Liz. But he isn't rational; he has a broken heart, and all he wants to do is go to the pub, find his friends, and drink until he can't stand.

He stalks to the door and throws it open forcefully, causing it to smash into the outside wall with a bang. And there, sitting on the step...

* * *

She had almost gotten herself together. The crying had been slowing down over the last few minutes. But the moment she sees him again, with his eyes surprised but empty, she falls apart all over again. Tears spill over and she buries her head in her crossed arms and wails. She feels ridiculous, but she can't stop it.

* * *

He can't help it. Upon seeing her still here, that little spark of hope that he thought earlier events had snuffed out at last is flaring up again.

"Rory?" he ventures softly. She doesn't look up, and she doesn't stop crying.

Jess sighs. This isn't what he wants to be dealing with right now. Nonetheless, he sits down beside her on the steps. "Why are you still here?" he asks, more coldly than he had anticipated.

At last, she chances a glance at him. "I'm sorry, Jess," she stutters, tears still pouring down her cheeks. "I'm so, so sorry. I should've just... just gone, but... I couldn't. I don't know what's going on and I... I..." She breaks off and takes deep gulps of air as sobs bubble up in her throat again. "I'm scared, Jess."

"What are you talking about?" he asks.

She shakes her head, staring at her shoes. "I feel like I might've just destroyed something," she says sadly.

Before he can censor himself, the words slip out. "Yeah, me." It tends to happen when he's upset- his walls come down and his verbal filter shuts off and he says things he never wanted anyone else to know. It figures that tonight, when he most wants to just forget how much he's hurting and live entirely in the moment, he would be unable to control what comes out of his mouth.

It's said, though, and Rory's head snaps up and her blue eyes fix on him with a stricken expression in them. "What?" she whispers, looking honestly shocked.

Jess wants to hit something again. She shattered him tonight, and she honestly has no idea. He laughs bitterly. "For somebody so smart," he says, "You're really fucking stupid sometimes, Rory."

"I don't understand."

"How obvious do I have to be for you to get that I'm still in love with you?" he hisses, glaring at her. Her head falls and she's back to staring at the pavement, but he can see the tears running renewed down her cheeks. It ought to make him feel bad, but it doesn't. He wants to lash out and hurt her the way he's hurting. "And you love that other guy," he reminds her.

Rory shakes her head. "No," she says.

Stupid hope-spark... "What do you mean, 'no'?" he asks tiredly. He is sick of all the bullshit and all the drama. He just wants some honest answers. Is that so hard?

"I don't love him," she says. "Not really. I'm _in_ love with him. There's a difference between loving someone and being in love with them." Jess thinks he sees what she means. He's not sure, though. It's a weird concept. But he lets it pass as she keeps talking. "I'm in love with Logan, but I love... well... you." She blushes, and new tears come creeping down her face. "It's so messed up, Jess. When Logan and I started to get more serious, I thought 'Finally, I'm over him. I've finally moved on.' Except then you came back and I found out that moving on and getting over it were two entirely different things and then Logan slept with all these different people and we fought about it and I said I forgave him except I didn't and I was so upset and I just didn't feel like I could talk about it to anybody and then I got the invitation to this open house thing and I thought 'of course! Jess will know what to do,' because you always knew how to make me feel better, _always_, even after I'd had my dream crushed and I thought I'd never be a journalist after all, you knew just what to say to snap me out of it and make me fix things even though it had been years since we've seen each other. So of course I came here, because you make me feel so safe and I just wanted to feel like that for awhile except then you kissed me and I don't know what to do with that and now you're sitting there and saying these things and I don't know what I'm supposed to do because no matter _what_ I do somebody's going to have to get hurt and I just can't stop it!"

Jess stares at her. It seems her rambling powers have increased since the last time he spent any significant amount of time with her. Except that this isn't really rambling, it's more like ranting. She's got more going on in her head and- dare he say it?- in her heart than he thought. He doesn't know how to deal with this, so he latches onto the thing that makes the most sense to him. "You love me?" he asks slowly.

She hiccups and lets out a hysterical little giggle. "A two-minute rant, and _that's_ what you latch onto?"

He shrugs. "That's the most important part," he tells her. That makes an impression on her, if her expression is anything to go by. "If it's true, why did you pull away tonight?"

"Because I didn't know you felt the same way," Rory says, as if it were the most obvious thing in the world.

"I kissed you, remember?" he points out a little angrily.

She shakes her head. "But that could have been anything, nostalgia or just the mood or some spur-of-the-moment Jess-thing!" she cries. "You're so spontaneous, you always have been; you and Logan are alike that way. It was a big part of what drew me to him in the first place- he just jumped, and it reminded me of you. But with this, with us, if I jumped and then found out you weren't serious or were just looking for some... some one-night thing? It would kill me, Jess."

"And you couldn't have just _asked_?" he snaps. She broke him, and over nothing at all. "Don't you know by now that when it comes to you, if I do something, I mean it?"

"I'm not like you!" Rory says, voice raised a little. "I can't break people down so easily. You're the one who can watch somebody for five minutes and know practically everything about them, not me! I've never been able to read people the way you could, and I've never been able to understand you the way you understand me! It used to drive me crazy! I wanted to know you like that so _badly_, but you couldn't or wouldn't let me in! I've never been sure where I stand with you. Do you know how hard that is, feeling yourself falling so hard and not knowing if the other person is going to be around to catch you?"

He stares at her. "Yes," he says slowly. "It was the same for me, back then. I had made a habit out of never giving a damn about anybody. And then there was you and you were _incredible_ and before I knew what was happening, I was in too deep to get out again. But there was _always _something in my way, Rory! Dean or your mom or whatever! God! It was like you _enjoyed_ keeping me guessing, keeping me dangling on a string, not knowing if you were really in it with me or if I was just a fling for you! And it really fucking hurt, Rory, but I didn't ask questions because I wasn't sure I wanted to know the answer! I could live with not knowing, as long as I had you." He doesn't realize until he stops that at some point he got to his feet and started yelling.

Rory looks at him like a deer in headlights for a long time. "I didn't believe you," she breathes eventually.

"What?"

"When you first came back to get your car, remember? You told me you loved me. I didn't believe you."

Jess feels his breath leave him and drops down next to her again. "I meant it," he tells her quietly.

She's crying _again_. "We were so stupid," she whispers. "How many chances did we have to fix it and just be happy? And every time, one of us or both of us messed it up."

"I know," he says.

"I love you," she reminds him.

"I know."

"What now?"

"No clue."

Rory lets out a breath and silence settles over Truncheon's front steps. Jess stares at the nearly empty street, his eyes carefully tracking every car that passes through the neighborhood at such a late hour and trying to sort out what he's feeling. She loves him- elation. Their demented past- regret. She loves him- elation again. She's taken- depression. She loves him, though. It all keeps coming back to that. It's making his head spin.

Suddenly, he feels her head rest on his shoulder. For a moment, he tenses up, startled by the contact. But it feels so right for her to be there, and he scoots a little closer to her and puts his arm around her. They sit like that for maybe half an hour, not speaking.

Then, as if acting on some prearranged signal, she tilts her head up to look at him at the same moment he glances down at her and their eyes lock together and it is electric. His mouth finds hers, perfectly innocently at first, but then with a fierce energy born from years of pining. His hands roam her body, searching for purchase, while hers land, one on his shoulder and one in his hair. He grins against her mouth, remembering so well how her hands always wound up in his hair.

It's an awkward angle, he thinks fuzzily, and he stands up, lifting her up with him, and she stumbles a little. The natural solution seems to be pulling her close for support, but he quickly realizes that may have been a mistake when he feels every soft curve of her pressed against the length of his body, making it nearly impossible to think straight. Apparently she is far from unaffected as well, because her hands clench in his hair, causing little stings across his scalp, and Jess gasps in surprise and arousal. There are very few things that turn him on more than hair-pulling.

Rational thought checks out.

* * *

When Rory wakes up, the horizon outside the window is barely pink and Jess' arms are around her. Neither Dean nor Logan are cuddlers, and it's a new experience for her, being held like this. It's nice, she decides. Her face flushes pleasurably as the memories of the night before seep through her. They made love twice. The first time was rough and desperate and carnal and when he had sent her sailing into oblivion, she had thought that nothing could be better. But when, an hour later, he woke her with tender kisses, she had been proved wrong. The second time had been slow and sweet, and she would never bring it up, but when he had followed her over the edge that time, she saw tears in his eyes.

She looks up at Jess, a lazy smile growing on her face on seeing him awake and looking at her. "Hi," she says softly.

"Hi." His lips twitch, but he can't quite produce a smile. Something's bothering him.

"You okay?" she asks, concerned.

He sighs. "You have a boyfriend, Rory," he tells her.

She nods. "I do."

"So... not that last night wasn't great, because it was-"

"It was, wasn't it?" she says, not willing to let her morning-after glow be burned out just yet.

"But is that all?" he asks. "Was it just one great night?"

For once, she feels like she can read between the lines and see what he's _not _saying: _I'm scared, Rory. I love you, and I don't want to lose you now. _She gives him a small, reassuring smile, and kisses him softly. "No," she promises. "I meant what I said yesterday. I won't run if you don't."

"I'm right here," he tells her.

"Logan's in Costa Rica," she informs him. "I'll move my stuff out of his apartment, and when he gets home I'll tell him."

This time, he manages the smile, and he pulls her closer and nuzzles her neck, pressing little kisses against her collarbone. That's as far as it goes this time, just soft kisses in the dark of the early morning, and they fall asleep in each other's arms. Just before Rory drifts off, she hears Jess' sleepy whisper:

"Love you, Rory."


End file.
